And on the seventh day…
Oct. 30th, 2013 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
artsyhonkerThis is a bit train-of-thought so it is going here rather than on my proper blog. There may well be a part II and a part III at some stage, because I would like to explore both the the wider societal implications of overwork, and ways of holding the centre and refusing that paradigm while stuck in a bureaucracy that is currently pretty wedded to it, but doing so in the same post as all this practical stuff is too long.
There was a conversation on Twitter last night of how many hours per week full-time stipendiary clergy should work, and how that matches the expectations parishioners have.
Clergy do face unique challenges, and I don't for a moment wish to imply otherwise. But this is a wider problem than just one faced by clergy. As a freelance musician I deal with some similar issues. Nobody really expects me to be pastorally available, and there isn't the same sense of responsibility to one community, but those are the main differences.
Here are some of the challenges from my perspective:
1) My work isn't limited to set hours or places.
I work in my home. I work at church. I work on trains, in coffee shops, in libraries. There isn't really anywhere I go on a regular basis that is a "work-free" zone, where work is unavailable to me. I work every weekend. I work evenings, I work mornings, I work afternoons. What this means in practice is that switching off is not always easy. I don't have a long commute in which to mentally pack away the things of the week and prepare for the weekend. Going from the music room to the kitchen isn't going to cut it.
2) Because I don't have a traditional 9-5 job or set shifts, people expect flexibility.
I have encountered a presumption that because I am not "in the office" all day, I have unlimited free time and flexibility. This is simply not true. But you know how it is: you have a "free" day coming up, with no structure, and you mentally add things to the list of what you'd like to get done, and soon that day has about 36 hours worth of stuff in it. This is even easier to do with someone else's day, when you don't know what else other people have added.
3) I need to set aside time for study and development.
I need to practice the organ regularly -- this is often not seen as work. I need to practice other instruments regularly, but this is even less seen as work! For my work as an organist I need to, at a minimum, keep up with the Church Music Quarterly and be aware of new resources in the shape of hymns and so on. It is also important to me as a musician to do more "academic" study, though this is often informal.
4) Like many working people, I don't have someone who can do housework for me.
It's tempting to work on music-related things for six days a week, then use my "day off" to clean the house. Domestic work is necessary, even if I am not personally very efficient at it. But you know what? Domestic work is still work. On the seventh day, God did not hoover the stairs.
5) Nobody else tells me how to structure my time, so a certain amount of my "work" time must be spent organising my work.
How much this applies to office workers will vary; it hardly applies to most factory workers at all. Everyone has to do time-management, but when routine fixed appointments are the exception rather than the rule, different strategies are required. What I find is that work that has a routine structure can easily trump less-routine work. My artificial deadlines are never as effective as real ones that obviously affect other people. So it is that my regular hard deadline organist work goes well, but I've been meaning to record an album since February and made barely any progress at all…
I think the above will all sound very familiar to clergy and to other people who manage most of their own time.
I spent a few years keeping most of Orthodox Jewish law, and that included strict adherence to Sabbath. It was wonderful. And it has provided me with a strong sense of the value of rest, and of making a proper day off into a "hard" commitment. It gave me endless practice at saying "I'm sorry, I have another commitment then, could we do Sunday or Monday?" to people who wanted me to do things on Friday night or Saturday. It gave me the experience of being told things had to happen Right Now Or Else and finding that, no, most things can wait a day. It allowed me to see that "doing it all" is part of the same idolatry as "having it all" -- one I still struggle with, to be sure, as do many in our society, but at least I am aware of it.
There is no amount of work that I can do that will make me a "better" person. This isn't about needing to rest in order to do more, although that dynamic is also important. This is about knowing that if something doesn't get done, it doesn't get done… and that's OK. I don't have to have the perfect career or a perfectly-kept house. What I can do in six days is enough.
What this means, in practical terms, for me now is this:
1) I set limits on my working hours.
Nearly every week, I have a day off. It starts one evening and ends when I go to bed the next, so that it is usually about 25 hours. I don't do any music-related work in this time. It is marked in my diary and I don't put appointments there, except occasional social events. I don't practice the organ. I limit domestic work and errands. I try not to think about work, and I try not to do academic or work-related reading. When possible I share this day off with my husband, but if I happen to be working on a Saturday I will make sure to take the Friday off instead. If there is a week where I fail to take a day off, I take an extra day and a half off the next week; one reason I don't miss my day off very often is that I can't afford to have two and a half days off the next week!
I try not to work more than twelve hours in a day. I fail at this pretty regularly, but I'm at least aware of how many hours I actually spend. There are days when I work much less than this.
2) I guard my time carefully.
I still use "I'm sorry, I have another commitment then" regularly -- and not just on my day off, but also on days where, looking in advance at my diary, I know there is just more than I'll be able to fit in. It's a very useful phrase.
If people routinely make appointments and then don't turn up, or cancel at the last minute, I stop making appointments with them so often. It isn't so much that I don't want to be with people who mess me around, as that there are more people I could meet with than time to meet them all, and such no-shows don't only affect me. As a musician I can do this more easily than a member of the clergy might, but I consider limiting no-shows to be an important skill for anyone who manages their own time.
3) and 4)
Domestic work and work-related study count as "work" in my system. No ifs, ands or buts.
5) I accept that I have to do some self-management.
Every few years I do a "time audit" for a couple of weeks or so, and see exactly how I am spending all my time. It is instructive. The last time I did it I was working 16-hour days: such is the creep of worthy tasks into "free" time.
At the moment I am finding a combination of GTD principles and Remember the Milk to be helpful in, well, getting things done. I'm not perfect at it. And so part of the category of things I call "work" includes learning about different systems for managing time, reading books on procrastination ("The Now Habit" is particularly good), and so on.
I think some of what makes all this difficult is the background capitalist assumption that work only counts if you get paid for it. Where clergy often run into trouble is with the commonly-held notion that they are paid to be available to their parishioners at all times and in all places -- clearly impossible even in a tiny parish like St Andrew's, with roughly 3600 people in it, let alone a more typical urban parish of 16000 or so souls.
More later -- busy day ahead in which I am triple-booked at one point. Joy!
There was a conversation on Twitter last night of how many hours per week full-time stipendiary clergy should work, and how that matches the expectations parishioners have.
Clergy do face unique challenges, and I don't for a moment wish to imply otherwise. But this is a wider problem than just one faced by clergy. As a freelance musician I deal with some similar issues. Nobody really expects me to be pastorally available, and there isn't the same sense of responsibility to one community, but those are the main differences.
Here are some of the challenges from my perspective:
1) My work isn't limited to set hours or places.
I work in my home. I work at church. I work on trains, in coffee shops, in libraries. There isn't really anywhere I go on a regular basis that is a "work-free" zone, where work is unavailable to me. I work every weekend. I work evenings, I work mornings, I work afternoons. What this means in practice is that switching off is not always easy. I don't have a long commute in which to mentally pack away the things of the week and prepare for the weekend. Going from the music room to the kitchen isn't going to cut it.
2) Because I don't have a traditional 9-5 job or set shifts, people expect flexibility.
I have encountered a presumption that because I am not "in the office" all day, I have unlimited free time and flexibility. This is simply not true. But you know how it is: you have a "free" day coming up, with no structure, and you mentally add things to the list of what you'd like to get done, and soon that day has about 36 hours worth of stuff in it. This is even easier to do with someone else's day, when you don't know what else other people have added.
3) I need to set aside time for study and development.
I need to practice the organ regularly -- this is often not seen as work. I need to practice other instruments regularly, but this is even less seen as work! For my work as an organist I need to, at a minimum, keep up with the Church Music Quarterly and be aware of new resources in the shape of hymns and so on. It is also important to me as a musician to do more "academic" study, though this is often informal.
4) Like many working people, I don't have someone who can do housework for me.
It's tempting to work on music-related things for six days a week, then use my "day off" to clean the house. Domestic work is necessary, even if I am not personally very efficient at it. But you know what? Domestic work is still work. On the seventh day, God did not hoover the stairs.
5) Nobody else tells me how to structure my time, so a certain amount of my "work" time must be spent organising my work.
How much this applies to office workers will vary; it hardly applies to most factory workers at all. Everyone has to do time-management, but when routine fixed appointments are the exception rather than the rule, different strategies are required. What I find is that work that has a routine structure can easily trump less-routine work. My artificial deadlines are never as effective as real ones that obviously affect other people. So it is that my regular hard deadline organist work goes well, but I've been meaning to record an album since February and made barely any progress at all…
I think the above will all sound very familiar to clergy and to other people who manage most of their own time.
I spent a few years keeping most of Orthodox Jewish law, and that included strict adherence to Sabbath. It was wonderful. And it has provided me with a strong sense of the value of rest, and of making a proper day off into a "hard" commitment. It gave me endless practice at saying "I'm sorry, I have another commitment then, could we do Sunday or Monday?" to people who wanted me to do things on Friday night or Saturday. It gave me the experience of being told things had to happen Right Now Or Else and finding that, no, most things can wait a day. It allowed me to see that "doing it all" is part of the same idolatry as "having it all" -- one I still struggle with, to be sure, as do many in our society, but at least I am aware of it.
There is no amount of work that I can do that will make me a "better" person. This isn't about needing to rest in order to do more, although that dynamic is also important. This is about knowing that if something doesn't get done, it doesn't get done… and that's OK. I don't have to have the perfect career or a perfectly-kept house. What I can do in six days is enough.
What this means, in practical terms, for me now is this:
1) I set limits on my working hours.
Nearly every week, I have a day off. It starts one evening and ends when I go to bed the next, so that it is usually about 25 hours. I don't do any music-related work in this time. It is marked in my diary and I don't put appointments there, except occasional social events. I don't practice the organ. I limit domestic work and errands. I try not to think about work, and I try not to do academic or work-related reading. When possible I share this day off with my husband, but if I happen to be working on a Saturday I will make sure to take the Friday off instead. If there is a week where I fail to take a day off, I take an extra day and a half off the next week; one reason I don't miss my day off very often is that I can't afford to have two and a half days off the next week!
I try not to work more than twelve hours in a day. I fail at this pretty regularly, but I'm at least aware of how many hours I actually spend. There are days when I work much less than this.
2) I guard my time carefully.
I still use "I'm sorry, I have another commitment then" regularly -- and not just on my day off, but also on days where, looking in advance at my diary, I know there is just more than I'll be able to fit in. It's a very useful phrase.
If people routinely make appointments and then don't turn up, or cancel at the last minute, I stop making appointments with them so often. It isn't so much that I don't want to be with people who mess me around, as that there are more people I could meet with than time to meet them all, and such no-shows don't only affect me. As a musician I can do this more easily than a member of the clergy might, but I consider limiting no-shows to be an important skill for anyone who manages their own time.
3) and 4)
Domestic work and work-related study count as "work" in my system. No ifs, ands or buts.
5) I accept that I have to do some self-management.
Every few years I do a "time audit" for a couple of weeks or so, and see exactly how I am spending all my time. It is instructive. The last time I did it I was working 16-hour days: such is the creep of worthy tasks into "free" time.
At the moment I am finding a combination of GTD principles and Remember the Milk to be helpful in, well, getting things done. I'm not perfect at it. And so part of the category of things I call "work" includes learning about different systems for managing time, reading books on procrastination ("The Now Habit" is particularly good), and so on.
I think some of what makes all this difficult is the background capitalist assumption that work only counts if you get paid for it. Where clergy often run into trouble is with the commonly-held notion that they are paid to be available to their parishioners at all times and in all places -- clearly impossible even in a tiny parish like St Andrew's, with roughly 3600 people in it, let alone a more typical urban parish of 16000 or so souls.
More later -- busy day ahead in which I am triple-booked at one point. Joy!